Jessica Silvey

Jessica Silvey has been weaving with wool and cedar for over thirty years, and participating in public exhibitions since 2004. Her love of Coast Salish Basketry and weaving comes from the cedar root baskets in her Grandmother’s home, baskets of various shapes, sizes and patinas that were woven by her aunts and grandmothers. Jessica has learned traditional techniques from research as well as trial and error. She harvests and prepares her own materials as well as traditional plants for dyes and medicines.

Jessica’s love for weaving and fibre arts, coupled with a background in museum curating and love of nature inspired her to open her own studio. In 2016 she opened Red Cedar Woman Weaving Studio, where she facilitates immersive weaving workshops in Coast Salish basketry, Salish weaving on the floor loom and harvesting traditional plants for dyes and medicines for Nations, schools, local museums, and universities. To date, she has also curated eight weaving exhibits in British Columbia and Australia.

About the Blanket

The title of Ms. Silvey’s blanket is “Unbroken Friendship”. In Jessica’s words, “I have chosen this design, as to me it represents the journey that we all need to take together towards reconciliation. It will not be an easy journey, as there is deep-rooted distrust, fear, and generational trauma in our community and hesitation on the settlers’ side, [as] both sides are truly entering into the unknown… but I firmly believe that this Weaving Project will help connect thoughts, minds, and hearts; it is a much needed first step towards Unbroken Friendship”.

The design begins with four inches of twined weaving on each end of the blanket, as a base, with the main body being woven with a Cherokee basket weave pattern called ‘unbroken friendship’. The warp is red and black wool and the weft pattern is woven with white wool. The midsection of the blanket, the red surrounded by black represents our people surrounded by darkness during the time of the residential school experience. The bottom section the grey zig zag pattern over the black and red represents the bluffs in Jervis Inlet, the black streaks that run through the grey rock with red pictographs painted on them to show that our people have been here since time immemorial.